OCZ Launches Vector Indilinx Barefoot 3 SSD, First All In-House Design

MojoKid writes "Not many SSD controller manufacturers have been able to compete with the likes of SandForce and the myriad of SATA drives from various OEMs on the market that are based on their technology. However, OCZ took a different approach recently when they acquired SSD controller manufacturer Indilinx and PCI Express Switch maker PLX. Today the company took the wraps of their new Vector line of SSDs. The Vector is the first drive from OCZ to utilize only technologies developed by the unified Indilinx, PLX, and OCZ teams (except for the actual NAND flash), since the acquisitions. The Vector is based on the new INDILINK Barefoot 3 controller, which in terms of its features and specifications, looks competitive with some of the fastest drives on the market currently. In the benchmarks, the drive's IOMeter and CrystalDiskMark scores line up well and OCZ is offering a 5 year warranty on the product."

Comments

Benchmarks don't mean much...

[Joce640k]

We've reached a point where benchmarks don't mean much to me. They're all fast enough.

What I want to know is how reliable is it? All new tech, all new driver chips? I think I'll let other people be the guinea pigs for this...

Re:Benchmarks don't mean much...

[Anonymous Coward]

omg wut do u mean? fast iz important i hav a quadcore custom gaming system with like 4 graphics cards and the ram has heatsinks n shit!!! my parents just bot me a new case wit like 8 fans, it looks so boss. i get like 400 FPS in CS, its really 1337. BOOM HEDSHOT!!!

Re:Benchmarks don't mean much...

[h4rr4r]

It is from OCZ reliability is not what they do, they do fast.
If these drives are already fast enough for you then don't even consider this product.

Re:Benchmarks don't mean much...

[virgnarus]

This is OCZ we're talking about, as in reliability is a distant thought for them. If you're willing to gamble getting a 1 out of 8 chance of purchasing a drive that'll last at least a year for the sake of speed, then you'll do whatever you can to get it, which means going for OCZ. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and an A+ cert or equivalent knowledge will know better to just grab a few reliable SSD drives from some other brand and run a RAID with em.

Re:Benchmarks don't mean much...

[Joce640k]

I want it to last five years without needing to return it under warranty.

Re:Benchmarks don't mean much...

[Joce640k]

Sure, if they stand by it...and don't make it more trouble to claim than it's worth.

Re:Benchmarks don't mean much...

[drinkypoo]

People still use RAID controllers? You know, your CPU is a hell of a lot faster than the one on the RAID controller, and with PCI-E it hardly seems worthwhile to try to minimize bus bandwidth.

Pricey

[Lucas123]

The 128GB model of the Vector SSD will retail for $149.99, the 256GB model for $269.99, and the 512GB model for $559.99. I guess OCZ didn't get the memo that consumer-grade SSDs are selling for well under $1 per gig these days.

Re:Pricey

[h4rr4r]

These are fast, not cheap.
Normally that would mean you also get "good", but this is OCZ so all you get is fast.

I wouldn't.

[stonecypher]

I bought one of their PCI drives - a RevoDrive X2. It was unbelievably fast.

To die. I barely used the thing, and it failed hard in about three months. Three months ago.

I'm still waiting on my replacement. I called them, and they authorized an RMA. Then I mailed my card in. Two months later, they called me (during Hurricane Sandy, despite that they had my address and knew perfectly well I couldn't answer questions,) to see if I still wanted my replacement (!) and would I give them their RMA number (!!) so that they could finally get around to it.

I told him my power was out and that I would love to have what they had promised me months ago, but I couldn't give him the RMA number at that time. He said he'd call back in a couple days. (Still not sure why he didn't just mail the drive.)

I haven't heard from him since, despite having left several messages with a suspiciously similar sounding "other" staff member who assures me that *this* time I'll get a call back.

It's a shame; the drive is wonderfully fast. However, it's unacceptably fragile, and I can't cope with their staff just never getting around to doing their jobs.

Re:I wouldn't.

[slaker]

I had a 10 week wait getting a replacement for a 32GB SLC drive from OCZ. They did not respond to support emails made on their web site, but they're very attentive if you go complain on Anandtech or HardOCP or something. In my experience, the shortest amount of time that an RMA from them has taken is a little under five weeks.

One of my customers has some systems with Revodrives. They die and I just toss them rather than bother with replacement. Some of the machines I'm dealing with are on their third one in 18 months.

Re:I wouldn't.

[jones_supa]

On a sidenote, it's interesting how people here set up boycotts on companies like Sony because their PS3 can't run Linux, while there are companies like OCZ that have a solid track record of producing clearly bad products and providing poor customer support, which in my opinion would much more deserve the bad reputation.

Re:I wouldn't.

[virgnarus]

People who've suffered through an OCZ or cheap garden-variety SSDs are the reason why I've had to deal with a lot of FUD circulating about SSDs. The contrast in reliability from an OCZ to something like a Samsung is so black and white, which is an unfortunate circumstance for us who have used solid SSDs for even enterprise operations and are trying to cure these individuals of their woes. Often it stems from people who go compulsive shopping for SSDs and purchase the aforementioned because they want a quick and economic entry into SSD technology (testing the waters). Or they opt for something like an OCZ because they are gamers and not PC savvy and just go straight for the big numbers and benchmark results (same people that buy cheap PSUs). Either way it stems from ignorance, and if there wasn't so much disparity in quality between SSD brands there shouldn't be that much of a deal, but there is, so people start throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Re:I wouldn't.

[PRMan]

Don't worry, OCZ is on a one-year ban list that keeps getting renewed. I allow new companies time to get things right before lifetime banning them. So far, I don't see any institutional evil, just making crappy products and getting overwhelmed with the support volume.

Re:OCS and Patriot SSDs are terrible.

[PlusFiveTroll]

All the six drives ive had started going bad by returning corrupted data (no errors shown on SMART, just bluescreens).
Never buy lifetime warrantied products from eithe of those companies. Patriot refused my lifetime warrantied drive by claiming it was damaged in the mail and OCZ just flat out refused claiming the drives werent currently manufactured (although under warranty).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act

Anytime a manufacture tries to dick with me about a warranty I name toss the above, along with FTC, Postmaster General, and the State Attorney General. Sorry, you can't advertize a warranty then say it doesn't exist. The Patriot one is a little harder to deal with, regular HDD manufactures look for any reason in shipping to void your warranty, so make sure you follow their packing directions. When the manufactures do try and mess with me, I make sure there newegg and amazon product lists get the message. Of course, when I get treated well, I make sure everyone knows about it too.

Available now

[lw54]

The best thing about product launches being announced on /. is by the time it's posted, the product is already available.

Newegg has the 128GB for $160, 256GB for $290 and 512GB for $570.

Re:Reliability?

[Shinobi]

Corsair, because the support guys at the store I buy my non-work hardware have Money-Back odds betting between themselves on guessing OCZ if someone calls in and asks about dead SSD's......

I have my doubts about this

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

All the six drives ive had started going bad by returning corrupted data (no errors shown on SMART, just bluescreens). Never buy lifetime warrantied products from eithe of those companies. Patriot refused my lifetime warrantied drive by claiming it was damaged in the mail and OCZ just flat out refused claiming the drives werent currently manufactured (although under warranty).

The original post, by an Anonymous Coward, has vanished, so I am having to quote it from PlusFiveTroll's quoting of it.

For quite some time now all SSDs have had 3 year limited warranties. I can't remember if anybody ever truly offered a lifetime warranty. If they did it was probably 2+ years ago. For what it's worth, I bought a 256 GB Crucial SSD in Jan. 2011 and it still works great. Some really are defective out of the box, but the number one thing to remember is that before you use it, you must update it to the current release of firmware. As far as I can tell, every SSD there is ships with older, defective firmware on it. If the AC really and truly has burned through 6 SSDs in a short period of time, he's doing something wrong. I just cannot accept that this would happen without the user being responsible in some way by not updating firmware, using it on a PC without UPS support and subjecting it to repeated power loss, failing to turn off defragmentation if using the drives under Windows, etc.

Re:I have my doubts about this

[idontgno]

For quite some time now all SSDs have had 3 year limited warranties. I can't remember if anybody ever truly offered a lifetime warranty.

I think you're misinterpreting "lifetime warranty". "Lifetime" means "of the purchaser" and if the manufacturer's staticstical product failure models predict you're about to submit a warranty claim, they dispatch either death robots or ninjas to your house and kill you.

"utilize"

[Onymous Coward]

To convert to practical use. Not simply to use.

Simply using:

Mike used the toothbrush.

Versus turning something to practical use:

Mike utilized the popsicle stick and onion bag from the trash, making an ad hoc toothbrush.

So our summary instead reads:

The Vector is the first drive from OCZ to use only technologies developed by the unified Indilinx, PLX, and OCZ teams.